Recreating the Interrogation Scene From The Dark Knight (Filmmaking 101 - Boot Camp)
Task: Find a scene you like from a film and re-shoot it, shot for shot.
The scene my group and I chose was the interrogation scene from Christopher Nolan's 2008 film The Dark Knight which is the second installment from his Batman, The Dark Knight, Trilogy. The scene is set in an interrogation room at the major crimes unit in Gotham Central where the Joker (Heath Ledger) has been taken in for questioning. He is first spoken to by Lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and then by Batman (Christian Bale).
We decided to pick this scene to film because it mainly contains a lot of dialogue within it but also it has the challenge of physical stunts that aren't to dangerous to re-create. We also decided on this scene because it didn't just challenge the crew but the cast too, with one of our team members, Joe, resembling Heath Ledger's Oscar Winning performance of The Joker. Our group also found this a very interesting scene to re-create as it experiments a lot with lighting in the scene and the use of different shots.
Once our group decided we were going to re-create this iconic scene from The Dark Knight, one of our team members, Joe, found the screenplay online and planned out the shots on a storyboard along with another team member, Nathan. They both new the film very well, as me and Amiliyah, team member, had never seen The Dark Knight before, so Nathan and Joe really helped us out with understanding the story, the reason of this interrogation and how Nolan brought it onto the screen. So this was a big challenge for me and Amiliyah especially. Our group also did a few practice shots before really filming so that we could understand how to do certain shots and play around with how the lighting is presented within the scene. During directing the scene I would look back at the scene on my phone and explain to others where a camera should be positioned or where the light is coming from or what an actor should do to re-create performances from the film.
Roles on Set
Crew:
The day before we started filming, we made sure we had all the costumes sorted out. We only have three main characters within the scene that had to be dressed in a similar attire as the characters in the actual film. For The Joker (Joe) we found a purple button up shirt and we weren't able to find a green waistcoat but were able to get a hold of a purple one, from the costumes we have in our studio, which still matched the main colour of Joker. For Gordon (James), also from the studio, we had him dressed in a white button up shirt, black trousers, a beige coat and a pair of clear lens glasses. Lastly, for the Batman (Tom) costume our teacher, Kelly, lent us a Batman costume that she owns.
The next day, filming day, we all arrived early so we could set up our studio to look like the interrogation room at the major crimes unit in Gotham Central. The studio was the best choice to film the scene in as it is a very big space that we could easily work around with placing the camera in different areas to resemble shots from the actual scene itself, and also to work around with the lighting at certain moments in the scene. The studio was also the best choice to film in because when we turned the central lights off the room pretty much went pitch black, the only issue we had was the main entrance door in to the studio has a window on it, so some light did come through the window but it wasn't a huge issue in production. It was quite easy to be able to replicate the design of the scene as well as it is set in an interrogation room that only consists of a table and two chairs in the centre of the room. We pulled together four tables, that we already had in the studio, together to make the table look much bigger and found two plain looking chairs from another room within the college.
As my group was setting everything up, the room and the camera, Joe was down at the makeup department, in the college, to get the Joker makeup applied to his face. The process took about an hour to do and was very much worth it. One of the main characteristics of The Joker is how terrifying he presents himself, whether he is committing a violent act or speaking his truth or even just how he looks physically, so the makeup was a very important factor to make The Joker just as menacing as Ledger's portrayal of the character in The Dark Knight. The makeup consisted of his face being all white, black around the eyes and a large red smile on his lips, there was also prosthetics put on both sides of Joe's lips to look like scarring and to look like a very disturbing smile embedded on The Joker's face. Joe's hair was also spray painted green to finish off Joker's makeup and also to tie in with The Joker's main colours that he represents himself with.
Once Joe put his costume on we were the ready to start filming. The scene starts with Gordon (James) walking through the door but we first had him sit in his position when he starts to interrogate The Joker so we could position the lighting for when he comes into the room and sits down at the desk. We needed the light to mainly focus on Gordon and only have The Joker's silhouette on the left-side of the frame, we did this by having a spotlight on the right-side of the camera that emitted light towards the door and on Gordon where it could not be placed on The Joker. Once we had the lighting sorted out for filming Gordon's scenes we then started to film. We did shoot many takes of Gordon walking through the door, whether it had been the wrong instructions James had received for when he walked into the room or not being able to hear us on the other side of the door. Once we had a good shot of all of Gordon's scenes when talking to Joker, when we watched back at the footage we noticed the shot looked very grainy due to the cameras focus, we had help from Daniella, teacher in training, on how we can focus the camera to stop creating grainy shots and to prevent it from happening again. We did come to a few more issues with
how the shots looked on camera, the camera still seemed to be going out of focus and creating grainy looking shots, we realised this once we filmed all of The Joker's parts of the interrogation with Gordon and our mid-shot of Gordon walking out of the door. Daniella did help us again with trying to figure out why the camera kept going out of focus and creating these very pixelated shots, we were then able to fix it and understand not to do it again for the upcoming shots we were about to do. Once we had worked out the problem with the camera, all the other shots we did looked much better as they were now more clear. We were also running out of time that day of shooting as we weren't able to re-do all the grainy takes and resume filming another day due to continuity purposes of Joker's makeup.
Once we had all of the scenes between Gordon and Joker finished we moved straight onto the scenes between Joker and Batman. When Batman first appears the room is all black, only being able to see The Joker through the darkness, and then a few seconds later the lights in the room come back on and Batman appears behind The Joker. This was when we had to be more careful with our actors safety because once Batman has appeared, in the light behind Joker, he then slams Joker's head off of the table. Of course we didn't actually want Joe's head to be smacked off a table so we made sure he had his hand in front of his face before he could collide with the table, this also worked well as Joe's hand was out of frame so you aren't able to see his head hit into his hand or the table. We did practice this a little bit before actually filming as we had to make sure Joe could get his hand near the table in time and also to make sure Tom wasn't going to hurt Joe by pushing his head to hard. There was another shot we had to do, as it was in the film, where Batman punches his fist into the Joker's hand is it's laid out on the table. Again, we had to make sure Joe wasn't going to get his hand hurt so we did this carefully by actually having Tom's fist a few centimetres away from Joe's hand, and then gently having the two collide into each other. On-screen the punch looks much harder than it actually is but this is because in The Dark Knight, Nolan shot the back of Christian Bale in front of Ledger (weren't able to properly see Joker) at the table and had Bale move his arm violently as if he was to use all his strength to punch Ledger. Then after that shot it closes up onto Bale and Ledger's hands and seeing the punch happen, so we took this into consideration and had Tom do the same as Bale, by having a lot of strength in his arm, but then cutting away and having a subtle punch on Joe's hand.
(Left) Shows Nolan's Dark Knight scene, Bale as Batman.
(Right) Shows are shot for shot of the scene, Tom as Batman.
(Left) Bale's fist slamming into Ledger's hand.
(Right) Tom's fist slamming into Joe's hand.
After filming them small stunts, we then continued onto filming the rest of the interrogation. This was simple to do as it is a conversation between Batman and Joker, the way we did this was by filming all of Joker's parts first. We only did about two or three takes as Joe knew the scene very well and knew all of his lines which made it much easier for us to move on quickly with the rest of filming. Once those shots were finished we then moved the camera round to face Tom and film Batman's parts, this again didn't take long as Batman only has a few lines in the shot and mostly had to film his facial expressions when reacting to The Joker.
As soon as we finished those shots, quickly, we moved straight into the next part of filming. This became a bit of a challenge as the next shots are quite physical between the actors. Once Batman has had enough of The Joker he then grabs him, by the collar, from across the table and Joker towards him. This scene
we had to be careful with again as we didn't want Joe getting badly hurt after the stunt. The way we filmed this scene, being as careful as possible, was by having Joe prop himself up on the table as Tom went to grab him. Then once Tom grabbed onto Joe's shirt, Tom pulled him across the table but also Joe was pushing himself towards Tom at the same time. This made it much easier, and no one got hurt, as we cut away to the shot of Batman holding Joker up against him.
For this shot (Left) we had the camera in the wrong position (Right) but this was only because we didn't have enough time to shoot this part from different angles, as Nolan does in the film.
Another precaution we had to take, stunt wise, was after Batman has held The Joker towards him he then slams him up against a wall. The way we, again, made sure Joe was safe was he had to jump at the same time as Tom was pushing him up against the wall so that the impact of his back against the wall was much softer than it would be. Whilst we were filming as well, the table was quite far from the side of the wall that we used for Batman to pin Joker to the wall. So when Tom still had a hold of Joe, we cutaway at this point and positioned the camera behind the two to face the wall, to where Tom was going to push Joe up onto.
Our shot (Right) we got very similar to Nolan's (Left) which we were very happy with and only did a few takes of, with an over the shoulder shot of Joker from Batman.
This shot wasn't too long as when Batman has Joker held to the wall, trying to force an answer out of him, he then flips The Joker onto the table. This was the last part of the scene that we filmed, as we ran out of time on the day to finish the whole scene but we all thought it was a good place to end as well, because as the stunts go on they get more physical and violent. To prevent Joe from getting hurt by this stunt, we made sure as he was getting flipped onto the table, by Tom, that he rolled over the same time Tom was flipping him over. This made for a much softer landing for Joe onto the table and he landed in a perfect position that was very similar to how Ledger landed in the scene.
Now that we had finished with the whole scene we had two more, quick, shots to do before wrapping up for the day. There are a couple of cutaway shots to behind the two way mirror that looks onto the interrogation room of detectives and officers from the crimes unit watching Batman and Joker. Gordon (James) walks into the room and watches with the rest of them. We quickly did this with our extras (Kai, Nathan and Sam) where they just had to stand by the wall and look forwards, as if they were watching the interrogation themselves. This only took us a few minutes and takes before wrapping up. These last few shots we did we had help from Daniella to be able to fasten the pace of filming and also to understand where cameras and lights are positioned within the actual scene of the film.
In conclusion, I believe that the production of our re-creation of Nolan's interrogation scene from The Dark Knight went well because, as a crew, we understood what we had to do as a task and how to challenge ourselves with a big scene like this one. We understood how the set should look, as well as our actors, and where everything should be positioned, from cameras to lights and to actors in a shot.
In terms of what we could have done better was understanding how to focus the camera before filming all of our scenes, without knowing how to fix the focus it caused us to have some very grain shots from the beginning of the scene. Also if we had time to re-shoot those shots was a problem as we wouldn't have had enough time to film the rest of the scene if we had gone back to those shots. I think we also could have taken our time to edit the scene as the ending of it looks very rushed as we were moving onto another one of our Film-Making 101 tasks, so I think we could have considered taking our time with editing the ending better.
The scene my group and I chose was the interrogation scene from Christopher Nolan's 2008 film The Dark Knight which is the second installment from his Batman, The Dark Knight, Trilogy. The scene is set in an interrogation room at the major crimes unit in Gotham Central where the Joker (Heath Ledger) has been taken in for questioning. He is first spoken to by Lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and then by Batman (Christian Bale). We decided to pick this scene to film because it mainly contains a lot of dialogue within it but also it has the challenge of physical stunts that aren't to dangerous to re-create. We also decided on this scene because it didn't just challenge the crew but the cast too, with one of our team members, Joe, resembling Heath Ledger's Oscar Winning performance of The Joker. Our group also found this a very interesting scene to re-create as it experiments a lot with lighting in the scene and the use of different shots.
Once our group decided we were going to re-create this iconic scene from The Dark Knight, one of our team members, Joe, found the screenplay online and planned out the shots on a storyboard along with another team member, Nathan. They both new the film very well, as me and Amiliyah, team member, had never seen The Dark Knight before, so Nathan and Joe really helped us out with understanding the story, the reason of this interrogation and how Nolan brought it onto the screen. So this was a big challenge for me and Amiliyah especially. Our group also did a few practice shots before really filming so that we could understand how to do certain shots and play around with how the lighting is presented within the scene. During directing the scene I would look back at the scene on my phone and explain to others where a camera should be positioned or where the light is coming from or what an actor should do to re-create performances from the film.
Interrogation Scene From Nolan's Dark Knight Screenplay
By Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan
Story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer
By Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan
Story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer
Roles on Set
Cast:
- The Joker - Joe Mitchell
- Lieutenant James Gordon - James Foster
- Batman - Tom Swales
- Extras - Nathan Appleby, Kai Speight and Sam Liddell
Crew:
- Directors - Harriet Parvin (me) and Nathan Appleby
- Camera Operators - Amiliyah Ashraf and Nathan Appleby
- Lighting - Amiliyah Ashraf and Harriet Parvin (me)
- Editor - Joe Mitchell
Filming
The day before we started filming, we made sure we had all the costumes sorted out. We only have three main characters within the scene that had to be dressed in a similar attire as the characters in the actual film. For The Joker (Joe) we found a purple button up shirt and we weren't able to find a green waistcoat but were able to get a hold of a purple one, from the costumes we have in our studio, which still matched the main colour of Joker. For Gordon (James), also from the studio, we had him dressed in a white button up shirt, black trousers, a beige coat and a pair of clear lens glasses. Lastly, for the Batman (Tom) costume our teacher, Kelly, lent us a Batman costume that she owns. The next day, filming day, we all arrived early so we could set up our studio to look like the interrogation room at the major crimes unit in Gotham Central. The studio was the best choice to film the scene in as it is a very big space that we could easily work around with placing the camera in different areas to resemble shots from the actual scene itself, and also to work around with the lighting at certain moments in the scene. The studio was also the best choice to film in because when we turned the central lights off the room pretty much went pitch black, the only issue we had was the main entrance door in to the studio has a window on it, so some light did come through the window but it wasn't a huge issue in production. It was quite easy to be able to replicate the design of the scene as well as it is set in an interrogation room that only consists of a table and two chairs in the centre of the room. We pulled together four tables, that we already had in the studio, together to make the table look much bigger and found two plain looking chairs from another room within the college.
As my group was setting everything up, the room and the camera, Joe was down at the makeup department, in the college, to get the Joker makeup applied to his face. The process took about an hour to do and was very much worth it. One of the main characteristics of The Joker is how terrifying he presents himself, whether he is committing a violent act or speaking his truth or even just how he looks physically, so the makeup was a very important factor to make The Joker just as menacing as Ledger's portrayal of the character in The Dark Knight. The makeup consisted of his face being all white, black around the eyes and a large red smile on his lips, there was also prosthetics put on both sides of Joe's lips to look like scarring and to look like a very disturbing smile embedded on The Joker's face. Joe's hair was also spray painted green to finish off Joker's makeup and also to tie in with The Joker's main colours that he represents himself with. 
how the shots looked on camera, the camera still seemed to be going out of focus and creating grainy looking shots, we realised this once we filmed all of The Joker's parts of the interrogation with Gordon and our mid-shot of Gordon walking out of the door. Daniella did help us again with trying to figure out why the camera kept going out of focus and creating these very pixelated shots, we were then able to fix it and understand not to do it again for the upcoming shots we were about to do. Once we had worked out the problem with the camera, all the other shots we did looked much better as they were now more clear. We were also running out of time that day of shooting as we weren't able to re-do all the grainy takes and resume filming another day due to continuity purposes of Joker's makeup.
(Left) Shows grainy shot of Joker. We also did the lighting for that shot by holding my phone, to the side of Joe's face, with the torch on and placing my finger slightly over it so we could only get his face in the light.
(Right) Shows the clear shot after we sorted out the problem of the focus on the camera.
Once we had all of the scenes between Gordon and Joker finished we moved straight onto the scenes between Joker and Batman. When Batman first appears the room is all black, only being able to see The Joker through the darkness, and then a few seconds later the lights in the room come back on and Batman appears behind The Joker. This was when we had to be more careful with our actors safety because once Batman has appeared, in the light behind Joker, he then slams Joker's head off of the table. Of course we didn't actually want Joe's head to be smacked off a table so we made sure he had his hand in front of his face before he could collide with the table, this also worked well as Joe's hand was out of frame so you aren't able to see his head hit into his hand or the table. We did practice this a little bit before actually filming as we had to make sure Joe could get his hand near the table in time and also to make sure Tom wasn't going to hurt Joe by pushing his head to hard. There was another shot we had to do, as it was in the film, where Batman punches his fist into the Joker's hand is it's laid out on the table. Again, we had to make sure Joe wasn't going to get his hand hurt so we did this carefully by actually having Tom's fist a few centimetres away from Joe's hand, and then gently having the two collide into each other. On-screen the punch looks much harder than it actually is but this is because in The Dark Knight, Nolan shot the back of Christian Bale in front of Ledger (weren't able to properly see Joker) at the table and had Bale move his arm violently as if he was to use all his strength to punch Ledger. Then after that shot it closes up onto Bale and Ledger's hands and seeing the punch happen, so we took this into consideration and had Tom do the same as Bale, by having a lot of strength in his arm, but then cutting away and having a subtle punch on Joe's hand. 
(Left) Shows Nolan's Dark Knight scene, Bale as Batman.(Right) Shows are shot for shot of the scene, Tom as Batman.
(Left) Bale's fist slamming into Ledger's hand.(Right) Tom's fist slamming into Joe's hand.
After filming them small stunts, we then continued onto filming the rest of the interrogation. This was simple to do as it is a conversation between Batman and Joker, the way we did this was by filming all of Joker's parts first. We only did about two or three takes as Joe knew the scene very well and knew all of his lines which made it much easier for us to move on quickly with the rest of filming. Once those shots were finished we then moved the camera round to face Tom and film Batman's parts, this again didn't take long as Batman only has a few lines in the shot and mostly had to film his facial expressions when reacting to The Joker. 
As soon as we finished those shots, quickly, we moved straight into the next part of filming. This became a bit of a challenge as the next shots are quite physical between the actors. Once Batman has had enough of The Joker he then grabs him, by the collar, from across the table and Joker towards him. This scene we had to be careful with again as we didn't want Joe getting badly hurt after the stunt. The way we filmed this scene, being as careful as possible, was by having Joe prop himself up on the table as Tom went to grab him. Then once Tom grabbed onto Joe's shirt, Tom pulled him across the table but also Joe was pushing himself towards Tom at the same time. This made it much easier, and no one got hurt, as we cut away to the shot of Batman holding Joker up against him.
For this shot (Left) we had the camera in the wrong position (Right) but this was only because we didn't have enough time to shoot this part from different angles, as Nolan does in the film.
Another precaution we had to take, stunt wise, was after Batman has held The Joker towards him he then slams him up against a wall. The way we, again, made sure Joe was safe was he had to jump at the same time as Tom was pushing him up against the wall so that the impact of his back against the wall was much softer than it would be. Whilst we were filming as well, the table was quite far from the side of the wall that we used for Batman to pin Joker to the wall. So when Tom still had a hold of Joe, we cutaway at this point and positioned the camera behind the two to face the wall, to where Tom was going to push Joe up onto. 
Our shot (Right) we got very similar to Nolan's (Left) which we were very happy with and only did a few takes of, with an over the shoulder shot of Joker from Batman.
(Left) Nolan's shot of Joker on the table is faced the opposite to our shot (Right). This was because when we filmed Batman flipping Joker onto the table, we filmed it from where Batman would've sat from, his entrance, instead of where Joker was sat originally.
Now that we had finished with the whole scene we had two more, quick, shots to do before wrapping up for the day. There are a couple of cutaway shots to behind the two way mirror that looks onto the interrogation room of detectives and officers from the crimes unit watching Batman and Joker. Gordon (James) walks into the room and watches with the rest of them. We quickly did this with our extras (Kai, Nathan and Sam) where they just had to stand by the wall and look forwards, as if they were watching the interrogation themselves. This only took us a few minutes and takes before wrapping up. These last few shots we did we had help from Daniella to be able to fasten the pace of filming and also to understand where cameras and lights are positioned within the actual scene of the film. In conclusion, I believe that the production of our re-creation of Nolan's interrogation scene from The Dark Knight went well because, as a crew, we understood what we had to do as a task and how to challenge ourselves with a big scene like this one. We understood how the set should look, as well as our actors, and where everything should be positioned, from cameras to lights and to actors in a shot. In terms of what we could have done better was understanding how to focus the camera before filming all of our scenes, without knowing how to fix the focus it caused us to have some very grain shots from the beginning of the scene. Also if we had time to re-shoot those shots was a problem as we wouldn't have had enough time to film the rest of the scene if we had gone back to those shots. I think we also could have taken our time to edit the scene as the ending of it looks very rushed as we were moving onto another one of our Film-Making 101 tasks, so I think we could have considered taking our time with editing the ending better.
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